


Ghost Hymns

by fridaysblues (taemin)



Series: Taekai Spies AU [3]
Category: EXO (Band), SHINee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Side Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 09:39:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7972081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taemin/pseuds/fridaysblues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taemin waits. Jongin returns. Or, most of him returns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I.

Taemin dreams.

It's an occurrence strange enough that he sits up at the conclusion of it, automatically reaching for a gun under his pillow and finding nothing but the mattress there. He rubs his eyes, noting the 1500 thread-count sheets he'd kicked off in sleep, now in a twisted bundle on the floor. This is brand-new territory for him, all of it. He hasn't slept more than a few hours at a time since he arrived in New York. He's surprised that it's daylight. He'd slept the full night; his first in a proper bed, after months of squatting in abandoned buildings down by the docks, just waiting for something to change.

It wasn't strategically wise to sleep deeply enough to dream while he was in Thailand. Seoul wasn't safe enough to let his guard down, either. Now, though—under the protection of Wilson Hong's roof—he's got a chance to relax. Nobody's going to get past the security codes and the retina scanner to the penthouse suite. He can rest easy for a change.

The dream's still lingering in the back of his mind, setting him ill at ease, although it might be a culmination of the past few years coupled with the sudden change in his environment, even if he _is_ relatively safe for the moment. He can't quite remember the details, but the feeling remains: his chest's laced tight with an ache that feels a lot like sadness, but with no indication why.

He shakes it off.

The best part about New York, Taemin decides mid-stretch, is that nobody's looking for him here. He's dead, supposedly, and Ssang Yong Pa's focus has turned inward now that the operation in Tokyo's gone to shit. He's heard rumblings of the tide turning on the other side of the globe, his old camp in Thailand subject to a hostile take-over by the Yakuza sometime back around the end of the most recent rainy season. Almost certainly in retaliation for the promises Ssang Yong Pa couldn't keep. 

He finally catches a glimpse of the alarm clock next to the bed. Just a little after 6 in the morning. He's never learned how to sleep in. Outside his door he can hear footsteps, a soft scuffling waltz circling the kitchen, unhurried in its back-and-forth rhythm. He rises with an unusual amount of stealth given his surroundings. There's a fucking vase worth more than his entire life just sitting here on some pedestal, and he's still flattening into the alcove to peer around the edge of the door. Some habits are too hard to break.

It's not Hong. It's some girl, all of twenty years old, in an oversized sweatshirt and sleep shorts, bustling from the refrigerator to the laptop set up on the counter, then back again. She's playing talk radio, but it's in rapid-fire English and he can't process it when his brain's still muddy with sleep. He watches her curiously. He hasn't spent a great deal of time around women his own age. They were expressly forbidden at the camp—deemed too much of a distraction, especially with the business they were in—and he hadn't cared much to flaunt the rules by bringing back a prostitute from the nearby village for a night. And it wasn't his preference, besides.

Hong's girlfriend, he surmises, still watching her as she slides up on the bar stool and crosses her bare legs neatly at the ankle. She's at least a few decades Hong's junior, maybe even a few years younger than Taemin. Figures Hong's an old perv that way.

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other and the creaking floorboard underneath him announces his presence. 

"Taemin-ssi?" she calls, turning down the radio. "Are you awake?"

He squints. She knows his name. So Hong must have had a conversation with her, sometime after he'd brought Taemin home last night, although it had been long past midnight. Not enough time for them to talk about what he'd be up to, now.

He clears his throat and steps into view. "Hi," he says, eyes cast low. She seems completely unbothered by his sudden appearance and gestures at the rice maker on the counter, set on warm.

"Are you hungry? Help yourself."

There's a whole spread laid out—egg and meat and soup and banchan, but other things, too—toast with a jar of expensive-looking preserves, fresh fruit, juice. He piles his plate high and tucks in, keeping his mouth too full to chat with her. She watches him, her eyes calm and without judgment. 

"I wasn't sure what you'd like," she offers after a moment, and he nods his approval. All of it, he likes all of it. He's never been picky when it comes to food—he'll annihilate it all with equal gusto and wait for seconds.

Eventually, Hong comes in, dressed in a crisply pressed suit, a pair of round, gold spectacles perched on the end of his nose. He squints for an extended beat at a shirtless, barefooted Taemin, but diplomatically takes a seat without commenting on Taemin's state of undress. "Good morning. I didn't think you'd be joining us for breakfast. I see you've met Rachel."

He speaks with a smooth, clipped accent that's difficult to place. It's British by intonation, with snatches of Australian in the way his vowels curl. He sounds _cultured_ , whatever that means, but it's hardly the most mysterious thing about Wilson Hong. Taemin's never thought to ask what Hong's passport says, but he's probably got a dozen anyway, all of them falsified. Wilson's probably not even his legal name, just another false flag in a long life full of aliases.

"Not formally, but. Yes." Taemin nods in Rachel's direction. She beams at him, mouth still full of egg, and hops off her seat to fetch Hong a cup of coffee from a smooth, white carafe on the counter.

"You're going to be late for work if you don't get a move on," he says, not lifting his eyes from the front page of the first newspaper in the stack. "Or are you planning on coming into the office dressed like that?"

"Dad," Rachel protests, laughing a little. "When have I ever been late?"

Taemin jerks his head up, surprised. _Dad?_ Wilson Hong's got a daughter? There have been any number of rumors about Wilson Hong for years, all speculation to fill the holes in his shrewdly-calculated image, but not once has Taemin ever heard the mention of a child. Not even a spouse. 

He risks a furtive half-second glance at Rachel's face, just long enough to search for a family resemblance, and, finding none immediately available, goes back to his breakfast.

"I'll be in once I'm finished here," Hong says. "Go."

Rachel clears her dishes away, tosses a "Nice to meet you, Taemin!" over her shoulder at Taemin, and disappears. 

Taemin sits there, suddenly anxious for reasons he can't quite articulate. Hong says nothing and it's _agonizing_ —no explanation for Rachel, no conversation about the work he's recruiting Taemin to do, nothing. 

"Kim Jongin," Hong says, finally, face hidden by the paper. Taemin freezes.

"Yes?" he says when his throat unsticks. It's the first time he's heard the name since he left Seoul five months ago. It was too painful to think about Jongin's trial, Jongin's sentencing. Jongin's incarceration, especially when there's nothing Taemin can do for him, not now. Hong pushes the newspaper his way and Taemin's faced with the reality of it at last. This morning's issue of the Korea Times: a huge, full-page picture of Jongin sitting at the defense table during his trial, his unfamiliar, short-cropped prison haircut visible just above the fold, accompanied by the headline: _QUESTIONS REMAIN IN CASE AGAINST DISGRACED NIS OFFICER_.

"What is this?" Taemin asks, trying not to stare too hard at the picture. "He's been sentenced already, what good could this possibly—"

"I've been told an informant came forward with some useful information that may be able to clear him."

"An informant," Taemin repeats flatly. Hong's far too casual for this to come as news to him, so he's clearly involved somehow. "Who is it? Who did you find?"

Hong doesn't answer. Taemin goes back to skimming the article, absently running his hand across the picture of Jongin's face until his fingertips go black with newsprint. He aches, wishing that he'd stayed. He should have forced Jongin come with him instead of leaving him behind. But it doesn't matter now; it's done. Jongin did what was right, and even if it's hard on Taemin, it's infinitely worse for Jongin.

"Have you heard any news? How is he?" Hong asks. 

"No, nothing," Taemin says, suddenly hoarse and stammering. "I haven't—no—I don't really know."

Hong looks up. "Would you like to?"

 

He doesn't go to Seoul until after Christmastime. There's too much to be done first, long weekend trips around the globe that Hong assures him will make sense, eventually. He goes to Toronto and Buenos Aires and Moscow, and then back again, looking for something he never finds. There's a South American contact named Timo who mails Hong large stacks of stolen files rolled up in poster tubes, photocopied on an old Xerox machine with a permanent streak across the lower third. 

"He couldn't send us a thumb drive?" Taemin grumbles when the staple tenuously holding one of the packets together gives up and sends dozens of pages scattering to the floor. Rachel stoops to help.

"Much harder to steal 700 pages than a digital file," Rachel reminds him. Sure, but the 700 pages don't tell them anything. There's a possible operative, a woman mentioned over and over but never by name, and a few suspiciously large transactions of cash from a politician in Bogota to a bank account in the Cayman Islands, but basically: nothing concrete, nothing particularly damning. Could just be corruption as usual.

Late December, Hong gets him a visa under an assumed name and he meets Wonshik outside the terminal at Gimpo. The last time he'd been in the country Taemin had vowed it would be the last, but here he is now, creeping through security at Gimpo airport with a fake passport and a hat pulled down over his ears. Nobody stops him. 

"I'm not sure I'm used to the haircut," Wonshik says by way of greeting when he meets him. He drops his mostly-unsmoked cigarette onto the pavement and scuffs it out with the toe of his bright red designer sneaker. "You look so... professional."

Despite his exhaustion, Taemin grins from ear to ear. "Well we both know that's bullshit, right?" He falls into step with Wonshik on their way to his car.

"No bags?"

"Not going to be here that long," Taemin says. He's got a small knapsack slung over one shoulder with an extra change of clothes, and that's it. He learned to travel light at a young age, although that was back when he had to be prepared to pick up and run for his life on a moment's notice. Some habits die hard.

"I haven't been able to find out much," Wonshik says. "Everything's been closed up—government buildings close on the holidays, you know," he says, elbowing Taemin. "Why don't you just apply to go visit him? Say you're someone he knew back from his army days. Hong could expedite it."

It's tempting, but stupid. Taemin's false identity is solid enough to pass the scrutiny at customs from a bored agent who sees thousands of faces a day. It's not solid enough to spend hours in a prison visiting room, under the watchful eye of a security camera.

"What do you have for me, then? Anything?"

"Nothing much. I told Hong, this is why you should've stayed stateside for now. There's nothing I can do. We've been trying through back channels, but—public opinion's still pretty hostile. He admitted fault and still didn't get convicted on the highest charge anyway, so people are _pissed_. Nobody's lining up to do Kim Jongin any favors in this lifetime. It's political suicide to even suggest it."

"So this'll be a short trip." Taemin crosses his arms over his chest. He'd been hoping to _see_ Jongin somehow—even a glimpse from afar would be better than the same recycled court pictures they keep printing in the paper.

"We can't break him out. Maximum security," Wonshik says, reading Taemin's thoughts before he even voices them aloud. "It would be very bad for all of us."

"I've done worse."

"You've cleaned up your act since then," Wonshik says.

"Since when do you care about causing trouble, anyway?"

"Since when do you care about feds?" Wonshik shoots back. "Last I knew, you hated government types. Why are you going out of your way for this guy?"

"It's… a long story. He was set up," Taemin says, and then changes the subject quickly before he has to explain himself any further. "You're still working for Wolf, then," he half-asks, already knowing the answer. He's still breathing and he's still living in Seoul; he's still under Wolf's thumb. Wonshik shrugs.

"Easier than the alternative. I like it here. I don't want to spend the rest of my life on the run."

"I'm dead, remember? I don't run anymore," Taemin says. "He doesn't suspect you're freelancing?"

"I don't think he cares. I answer his calls and I don't ever ask questions. That's all he wants from me."

"If that changes—"

"Hong's already told me I have a place to go if I need it. But I won't," Wonshik says. "Thanks, though."

 

—

 

It's not all for naught, apparently. Wonshik gives him an address and insists on driving him across the city. It's a tiny café in Seocho-gu, nestled at the end of a dead-end street. No contact information, nothing to indicate why he's here or what he's supposed to be accomplishing. Thousands of miles, hours spent in an airplane, the fake passport—all to push open a glass door and listen to the jingling of a bell and find himself face-to-face with a woman who is almost certainly Jongin's mother.

She brings him a coffee and he watches her intently over the rim of his mug while she works, noticing all the tiny features he's been trying to hold onto in his head. The warm, sleepy eyes, the full mouth, downturned now in concentration. Jongin had been exceptionally pretty, appearing in the jungle like he'd stepped out of Taemin's imagination. Taemin can see where those high cheekbones of Jongin's came from, now. 

There's a young woman at the counter breastfeeding a baby in her lap. She calls the woman _Mom_. Taemin feels voyeuristic in the worst way, his stomach twisting and sick. He shouldn't be here. Wonshik should have kept this discovery to himself, because now Taemin knows that Jongin has a family. Jongin has a mother and at least one sister and a niece or nephew, and in all the times Taemin has thought of Jongin, he's never once taken into consideration that there's more on the outside world that Jongin may want to return to, instead of him.

Taemin is stunned and powerless and finds that he hates that feeling more than anything in the world.

The woman catches Taemin staring and smiles patiently. "Would you like some more coffee?"

"These are very good," he says, holding up a half-finished Madeline, buttery and sweet. She smiles and slips him another one, calling him a _good boy._ If only she knew. She keeps touching at the silver cross hanging on a chain around her throat and he thinks of his own mother, his early childhood spent wrapped in the smoky scent of candles burning out, Taesun wriggling next to him in the pew, desperate to get out of his starched white shirt. He'd been called a good boy then, too.

He snaps out of it, hurt by the unbidden memory, noticing the wrinkles at the corners of this woman's eyes, the sad slant of her mouth when she turns away. He wants to talk to her about Jongin, but she's probably had enough of complete strangers forming opinions on her son's guilt, and he can't tell her who he really is and what he knows. She's in pain, and he's nobody of consequence. He'll only hurt her further if he says anything. He wonders if she can sense a connection between them, but that would be crazy, and it doesn't matter, anyway: she disappears into the back and doesn't return before he leaves.

He sticks a million won, all that he has left, into an envelope and writes her a note telling her to persevere. He doesn't sign it, but he puts it next to his drained coffee cup and pats it for good luck. It's the least—it's _all_ —he can do.

 

—

 

A noise startles Taemin awake, and the lights in the office begin to flicker to life as someone makes their way to his office. He holds very still, breath trapped in his cheeks, feigning sleep.

"Taemin?" It's Rachel. She's not buying his charade; she never has. "You're sleeping here again?"

He sits up, disoriented. For a second he expects to be back in the warehouse and then he remembers all at once where he is, how far he's come since then. His phone slithers off his stomach and bounces across the carpet to land at Rachel's feet.

"You have a place now, don't you? With a bed? It's got to be more comfortable than the couch," she says, looking past Taemin to the deep impression his sleeping body left in the couch cushions.

"I do—I just stopped back to pick up—something," he fibs weakly, squinting against the bright light. He hates his new place. It's cold and empty, and there's a bed but it doesn't feel like a place he wants to call home yet. 

She scratches the back of her right calf with her other foot, looking a little embarrassed to have caught him spending another night in the office.

"Why aren't you home, or—I don't know, doing anything else?" Taemin asks through a yawn.

"I was on my way out, but I had an alert that you swiped into the building and wanted to make sure you were alright." She seems to wrestle with this next part: "Do you have any plans for tonight?"

"Tonight?"

"It's New Year's Eve, Taemin. Parties. Drinking. You know. Fun stuff." She smiles. "It doesn't all have to be work, you know. Even if Dad thinks otherwise. Can't you hear the racket outside?"

And he can—outside, the sound of people passing by on the sidewalks. Laughing, cheering, celebrating—there's someone singing loudly and off-key. He shrugs. "Probably just an early night for me. I'm still jet lagged."

"Well, a friend of mine from school is having a get-together at this club. I don't know how she managed to book it, but if you wanted to come, I'm sure she wouldn't mind—"

"No, thanks," Taemin says, putting her out of her misery. "That's not really my scene."

"I know," she says, looking relieved anyway. "But you're going to be all alone."

Taemin feels a weird pull in his chest. So she's noticed, too. "It's okay. I'm used to it."

"I'll leave you to your self-pity, then," she says, and flashes him a grin he can't help but return. She tosses his phone back onto the couch and then he's alone again, staring out the large glass window at the first flakes of snow drifting past. Twenty-four hours ago he was still in Seoul, and he's having a hard time trying to separate his old life from the person he's supposed to be right now. He keeps thinking about Jongin's mother. He keeps thinking about _Jongin_.

His phone rings. "Yeah," he says, still feeling cotton-mouthed and dehydrated from his nap. He'd taken a cab from the airport straight back to the office. He's still in the clothes he traveled in, and even though he hasn't showered or changed, he doesn't want to go back to his apartment tonight if he can possibly help it. 

"You're back." Hong.

"Obviously."

"Did you see him?"

"No." 

"You should have let me arrange—"

"No," Taemin says quickly. "He's a high-profile prisoner kept in solitary. They'd notice a change in the visitors log if somebody new showed up. Leave it. I don't want to get him in any more trouble."

Hong hums thoughtfully. "I'm sure there's a price. There's always a way around these things."

"His—his mother," Taemin says softly. "Do you know—has she been to see him? Is she on the log?"

"He hasn't allowed any visits from his family, no," Hong says. "How is she? Did she say anything about him?"

"I didn't _ask_ her about him, Christ," Taemin says rudely, too frustrated to care. Nobody speaks to Hong like that, but Taemin can't hold back. Hong and Wonshik had sent him in there unprepared, and for what? To gape at her pain? To spy on her? "I'm not interrogating a woman whose son was falsely accused of treason. She's suffered enough. Is that why you sent me? To bully her into talking about him? Because I won't do it, I'll quit and find something else to do for you—"

"Taemin," Hong says gently. "My apologies, I meant no offense. No, of course not. I merely thought—you might break cover, for her."

"No. I didn't."

"Did you reach out to any of his associates from the NIS? I know they've been in touch with him. They're all on his approved visitors list."

"Uh, no." Taemin laughs drily. "They're not my biggest fans. They'd be legally obligated to throw me in jail with him and throw away the key."

"Perhaps your next best option," Hong says, and it takes a moment to register with Taemin that Hong's joking, because he _never_ jokes. 

"Uh. Sir?"

"I'm sorry the trip wasn't more productive, Taemin. I'd hoped Wonshik could come through with something for you. We'll try again. Speak to someone about moving Jongin—another facility, perhaps. His welfare's what's most important now, until he's released."

Taemin swallows hard, thinking about the conditions Jongin's probably facing right now. He's heard stories, and they're bleak. "Listen, sir. I'm… still feeling the flight, so I'm going back to bed."

"You're not in bed. You're at the office."

Taemin looks around, expecting to see Hong somewhere down the hall. Nothing immediately apparent. He hates it when Hong does that. He's got eyes everywhere.

"I asked Rachel to check in on you. When your flight arrived and you didn't call, I suspected where you'd gone."

"I came back to catch up on the week and I fell asleep," Taemin lies. "I'm going home now."

"Good." Hong pauses. "Happy New Year, Taemin. We'll have better luck next year."

"Yeah," Taemin says, looking at the ceiling. His eyes sting. Probably just dry from the nap. "Maybe."

 

 


	2. II.

"You're late," Rachel says when Taemin comes around the corner from the conference room. He doesn't look up from thumbing through the e-mails on his phone. He's been waiting to hear back from Timo about receiving a new batch of files for three days now and his impatience is getting the best of him. They've all been useless, but he's a man obsessed, and he's _sure_ that eventually they'll turn up something about the people who framed Jongin.

"Late for what?"

"Meeting. Guy's in your office."

"Who—?"

"He's been waiting fifteen minutes," she says crossly, putting her headset back on which effectively ends the conversation. She's usually more forthcoming than this, but she's been working on decrypting something all week and the failed attempts have made her crankier than usual.

_Who the fuck?_ Taemin wonders. It's probably one of Hong's contacts added to his schedule at the last minute, another business-type in a sleek suit offering a hell of a lot of money for Taemin to take care of a 'problem'. He never thought he'd be using his explosives expertise to help rich guys get richer by perpetrating insurance fraud, but he's blown up three server rooms this year, and he's just not in the mood for a fourth, even if the money's outstanding.

"I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong—" He looks up finally and stops short in the doorway, all of the air in his chest whooshing free in one hard breath like a punch to the solar plexus.

"I—uh. Hi." Jongin stares at him with wounded, hollow eyes. His skin is greying, like he's just stepped out of the newspapers Taemin's been obsessing over for the past three years. Jongin's fingers are so thin they look brittle and he looks… old. Tired. Exhausted. He can't stop fidgeting. But there's a tiny smile forming at the corner of his mouth, the dimple creasing in his cheek, his eyes unsure—watching Taemin, waiting for Taemin to do something, anything, to let him know it's okay to be here. Taemin would speak, except he doesn't know what to say first. 

Instead, he leans back out into the hallway, catching Rachel's stupid smile. She'd known. She'd recognized Jongin and lied to Taemin, hoping for this exact moment. "Tell Hong I'm in another meeting," he says, and slams the door shut behind him. His hands are vibrating. He wants to touch Jongin—wants to kiss him—wants to make sure he's okay—but doesn't know—should he—?

Jongin lunges, wrapping his arms around Taemin's neck. They stumble for balance but Taemin holds him, surprised at how light Jongin feels—not the lean, muscled body he remembered pressing up against him in the jungle, but hollow-boned, almost frail. Taemin knows it was stupid to expect anything at all. He'd been waiting for this—for Jongin—for years, now, and he'd imagined this moment a thousand different ways, but nothing's quite the way he remembered it. The way his brain had put his memories together to keep him going these past three years—it feels strange, now, to be presented with the real Jongin in his arms, to suddenly press play on the life he's had on pause, the one he's imagined a thousand times.

 

—

 

Taemin brings him home. He's torn between throwing him on the bed to put his mouth on him, and tucking him under the covers to let him sleep forever, and just one of those impulses is weird enough, but entertaining both of them at the same time causes Taemin to short-circuit briefly. When he finally gets a grip, he ushers Jongin around the apartment for a brief tour, keeping his hand firmly anchored on Jongin's back, protective, remembering how sick he'd been back in Thailand and even though it's not the same at all it still feels like deja vu, like he needs to be _so careful_ with him.

Jongin still hasn't spoken, not really. Taemin doesn't know what he wants him to say. He knows—he _knows_ it was bad. He's known for years that it would be bad, but he's faced with it now. He can see it in Jongin's haunted expression and in his condition—he's _so thin_ , the cut of his jaw sharper than ever, tapering to the fine point of his chin. He's been whittled down to nothing but sinew and bone, skin and lean, wiry muscles. He lies down on the bed and stretches just enough for his shirt to come untucked and reveal the painful jut of his hip bones. Taemin swallows hard, demolished by the sight of him—here, in front of Taemin, but still so far away. 

Jongin smiles a crooked little smile at Taemin, soft and sweet, and nods along in all the right places. He's listening intently to Taemin's bullshit—he's so quiet, so unlike the Jongin who used to go effortlessly toe-to-toe with Taemin's banter. He seems unsure of the sound of his own voice when he does speak, unused to its timbre, his voice thin and raspy and out of practice. When he laughs it sounds wrong, too, like he doesn't quite know how to do it anymore and sound convincing. It's been a long time since he's found anything funny enough to try, Taemin supposes.

Jongin curls closer. Taemin desperately wants him to say something—anything—but doesn't want to push him. He's like a frightened animal, curling in on himself into the fetal position. It's been years but Taemin remembers vividly: he never used to sleep like that.

"It gets cold here in the winters," Taemin says, babbling, trying to fill the silence between them until Jongin's ready to talk. "Unbelievably cold. It's because we're on the water. The first winter here was terrible. It snows so much, and the wind cuts right through everything. You need some new clothes. We'll get you a scarf. And a warm coat."

The space between them closes. Jongin kisses him mid-sentence, clearly trying to get him to shut up. Taemin startles and then catches up, kissing him back, feeling his mouth go slack. It takes everything in him not to hold Jongin's cheeks and kiss him, really kiss him as deeply as he wants to. There'll be time enough for that later. Jongin's eyelids blink heavily, already half-asleep, trying to kiss back and failing.

"You can sleep," Taemin whispers against Jongin's half-open mouth. He kisses Jongin's philtrum, the tip of his nose, his eyelids. "You'll still be here when you wake up. I promise."

Jongin's still in his suit. Taemin unbuttons the shirt at his throat but doesn't have the heart to wake him up and make him change. He doesn't—he doesn't have clothes for him, he wasn't expecting him yet. There's so much he hasn't prepared for. So much he never _could_ have prepared for. He doesn't know what to do with someone who sleepwalked back into his life. The way Jongin's behaving, he's like someone who walked into a room knowing they needed to be there, but forgot the reason why. 

Jongin shivers at Taemin's hands on him, body tensing for a brief moment, and then he relaxes again. The frown on his face stays. Taemin puts his thumb on the crease at the bridge of Jongin's nose, trying to smooth it away, but to no avail.

Taemin wants to know what happened, all of it, but he can see: it's going to take some time to coax Jongin out of this shell. 

 

—

 

Rachel calls while Jongin's still sleeping off his second orgasm of the morning. Taemin gets out of bed to answer it and stands in the bathroom, speaking as quietly as he can manage with his hand cupped over his mouth to avoid disturbing Jongin.

"You're alive, then," she says.

"I am."

"And your phone's working"

"It is."

"We were worried when we didn't hear from you."

"You were not," Taemin says over her delighted cackling. And then, the obvious: "I'm not coming in today."

"We thought so. Dad says take the week, if you need it. And it sounds like you do." She pauses, her voice gentling. "Is he okay?"

Taemin can't—or doesn't want to—share his private thoughts on the matter because while he likes Rachel, they're not _that_ close, and he never knows if what he says will make it back to Hong or not, and this—he wants to handle himself. "He will be," he says. 

"Do you need anything?"

"Yeah, but I don't know what that is yet."

"I can bring by some food, or—clothes? I don't know."

An awkward pause. "He's… he spooks easily right now. Maybe it's best he stays away from. You know."

"Us." She doesn't sound upset, just curious. "That's fine. Has he _said_ anything about his case—"

"No, nothing, just—nothing much at all, really." He looks over his shoulder at Jongin's prone form, the calm look on his face as he dozes. "He needs some time."

"Mmm." Rachel hums thoughtfully. "Be gentle, then."

Taemin scoffs. "What do you mean?"

He can hear the smile in her voice, all the way across town. "You know what I mean."

Across the bedroom, Jongin stirs. "I'll check in later," Taemin says, hurrying her off the phone at the sound of Jongin's sleepy sigh, followed by a confused whine at the discovery of Taemin's absence. "Thank you."

Jongin rolls over blinking, a sleepy smile on his face. He's still naked, wrapped in a sheet. Already his body language is easing up some, more open and inviting. The look in his eyes has changed, too—soft, less afraid, especially now that Taemin's staying home with him instead of leaving him alone in the apartment all day. He watches Taemin finish his call and toss the phone aside before he tilts his head up for another kiss. Taemin doesn't make him wait for it.

 

—

 

During that first, tense week, when Taemin isn't sure which version of Jongin came back to him, Jongin seems to crave closeness over anything else. He doesn't say much, but he takes fistfuls of Taemin's shirt in his hands and Taemin gives him anything he wants, even if he's supposed to be on his way out the door. It's filthy, Jongin writhing underneath Taemin, pulling him closer, all elbows and long limbs and heavy breathing, searching for Taemin's mouth with his own. 

It's because he stops thinking and just lets his body go on autopilot. Taemin's more than happy to suck Jongin's cock to clear his mind for a while, doing things with his fingers he'd never dreamed of before he met Jongin, their bodies sticking together with sweat when the air conditioning breaks and Taemin offers to 'work from home' for a second week which really means a lot of fucking around, christening every surface of their apartment, muscling Jongin up against the arm of the couch and bending him over or jerking him off in the shower when they step in to cool off.

He goes a little wild with it once he realizes it gets Jongin to smile and puts his mouth on every inch of Jongin's body, brushing his lower lip against the soft skin of Jongin's stomach to hear him giggle, wondering if he's ever going to get him to open up and talk as he places deliberate kisses on Jongin's kneecaps. Tired, he rests his cheek on Jongin's thighs, tickled by the fine dusting of wiry hair there, and looks up at him, just smiling. Jongin smiles back and runs his hand through Taemin's damp hair.

"Asshole," Jongin murmurs, half-conscious and dazed from the heat, a reaction to nothing in particular except Taemin's entire existence. Taemin kisses his hip in reply.

"Roll over," he says after a minute. Jongin turns onto his stomach, obedient, and lets out a long, contented sigh when he gets settled. Taemin goes to work pushing Jongin's tank top up over his shoulders, exposing the long, muscled line of Jongin's back and tracing it reverently with his hands. Jongin exhales into his forearm at the caress of Taemin's palm.

"Mmm. Feels good."

Encouraged, Taemin keeps going, even though he's never really given a massage to anyone before. His fingers alight on something—a mass, stiff and unnatural, just under the surface of Jongin's skin, right at the base of his pelvis. He doesn't remember this. There's so much about Jongin he'd forgotten—or is it new? Is it something that happened in the three years they were apart? Gently, he tries to manipulate it with two fingers. It doesn't move.

"Bomb," Jongin says, not lifting his head from the pillow. Not new, then. "Shrapnel. It's all scar tissue." His eyes scrunch with fleeting pain when Taemin presses on it again, and then his mouth drops open, relieved, panting wetly. "Oh. Yeah. Fuck, yes."

"If you insist," Taemin says, abruptly pushing Jongin's knee forward to put him at a better angle. 

 

—

 

"I need boots on the ground in Moscow," Hong says, weeks later. "You'll leave tonight. Timo will meet you."

"No," Taemin says. Hong raises an eyebrow. Taemin's rarely so openly defiant.

"No?"

"No, sir, I'm sorry," Taemin says. "I can't—I can't leave him alone right now."

Hong nods. Taemin hates that Hong's face is so impassive all of the time. It's impossible to get a read on his reaction to Taemin's refusal. He just goes back to his paper like it's nothing, like Taemin's talking about the weather. "Alright, then."

Taemin hates to feel like he's disappointed Hong. "I'm sorry, it's just—"

"I understand."

"I know that this is important—"

"It is."

"—but he still—worries when I'm not home, and I don't know… if it's a good idea to leave him for that long. He went a little stir-crazy when you sent me to Washington last weekend, and to leave again so soon, I don't know what that'd do to him—"

"Taemin." Hong folds the paper and sets it on his desk. "I didn't ask for further explanation. I said I understand, and I do. You're not in trouble. I knew this was a possibility. You have no obligation to continue down this road if you'd rather take some time."

"It's just—he doesn't know. What we're doing. He doesn't know—he hasn't asked, so I haven't—said anything," Taemin says, fumbling for the right words.

"When will you tell him?"

Taemin lifts a shoulder. "It's not… when he's ready to come back to work, then I'll tell him. But he went to jail for this, and he's… it fucked him up. He doesn't want to think about it, and he doesn't want to think about anything related to it. I think it's best I just… leave it all out, for now."

Hong nods. "I tend to agree. If he's a liability—"

"He's not a _liability_." Taemin says it like it's a dirty word. "He just needs some time."

Hong doesn't get it. Hong hasn't been imprisoned, beaten, shackled. Hong may try to help, but he knows retina scans and high powered rifles. Hong knows bulletproof glass and kevlar vests. He doesn't know what it's like to be utterly reliant on yourself for safety, to be powerless and afraid, to have to fight tooth and nail just to make it to the next day, the next job, the next struggle.

"And you? Do you need time?" Hong asks patiently.

"I'm done traveling," he says. "But I'm still committed. How can I help—I mean, is there anything I can do without leaving the city?"

"Our work is by no means finished, Taemin. You'll be useful here."

 

After his meeting Rachel finds Taemin stretched out on the couch in his office, his shoes kicked off somewhere across the room. She turns on the light just to listen to him complain.

"You're not going to Moscow?" she asks, ignoring his protests.

Taemin shakes his head. She perches on the corner of his desk and crosses her legs at the knees, leaning her weight back on her hands. 

"How's he _doing_?" She asks, like she hasn't already asked the same question a thousand times since Jongin showed up. "Has he said anything about what happened? The trial? Has he remembered anything that happened before—"

"No. And stop asking." Taemin sits up a little to scowl at her. "He'll talk when he's ready. Bugging him about it is just going to make him run away." Taemin's so careful with his words around Jongin. He just wants him to feel safe, and harassing him into opening wounds that haven't healed properly—it makes Taemin ill to even consider it.

"You can't let him keep pretending he was away on vacation this whole time, Taemin. He's got to process everything—it's important. And don't you think he wants answers as much as we do? We're stuck here until we get a lead—"

"Making him relive every shitty thing that happened to him is going to make it better? I think he wants to move past it and be normal."

"Oh, what's _normal_?" Rachel rolls her eyes. "Everyone's carrying around some sort of trauma."

"Oh, yeah, growing up as the daughter of Wilson Hong must have been really hard for you. Did he make you clean your room before he gave you an allowance? Or did you just have free rein with his black card, because I don't think we're talking about the same kind of trauma here," Taemin snaps. His tone is far too mean and he wants to take it back immediately, but the apology gets stuck somewhere in his throat.

"He did," she says tightly. She seems to wrestle with something inside of herself a moment before she says: "Just my room, though. The group home I lived in before made me clean the bathrooms, too. The aunt before that didn't make me do any chores at all, but she used to throw empty beer bottles at me, so it wasn't fun."

Taemin sobers instantly. "I didn't know, I—shit, Rachel. I'm sorry. Forgive me."

She closes Taemin's office door and leans up against it, deliberately avoiding eye contact with him. "My parents were murdered when I was seven."

"Jesus."

"Someone broke into our apartment—I didn't hear them, I don't know how. They killed my parents and forgot to check the back room to see if there were any kids. So I lived."

"Who—did they ever catch who did it?"

"No," she says. "The investigation went cold very quickly. Daddy was a defense attorney. Not the earnest, noble kind, either, so. It could have been any number of his clients' associates. Given—how they did it—it was always assumed he'd pissed off the mob." He sees a flicker of something in her eyes. He's seen the same look on Jongin's face when he's remembering something he'd really rather forget. 

"I'm so sorry," he says again. _Sorry_ doesn't even seem like enough. "How did you end up living with Hong, then?"

"After I was taken away from my aunt, they put me in a group home. They weren't told who I was at first. And when they found out I was the girl from the newspapers, the girl the mob left behind, they tried to send me away because they were afraid someone was going to come back and finish the job. Dead girls can't testify." She hugs herself a little tighter. "They changed my name, you know. Before Hong came to get me. Rachel wasn't the name I was given by my parents, but it was a safety precaution. Just in case."

"What was your name? Before."

She smiles. "Nobody ever asks me that."

"I just did."

"It doesn't matter. It's not who I am anymore." She can pretend she's past her trauma, but Taemin can see plainly: she's still afraid. She'll keep that secret the rest of her life.

"So how did you end up here?"

"I don't know how he found me. Only that he came into the group home one day—I'll never forget it. He was in one of those suits he always wears, and it was the first time I'd seen someone dressed like that since Daddy died, and—he said he was an uncle who'd been living overseas, which could have been true, for all I knew—I never met Daddy's family, so I trusted that he was my father's brother, that he was supposed to take care of me all along. He had adoption paperwork and photos of me as a child, and he was so kind to me that I wanted it to be true. He let me be normal for so long. I had no hope of a normal childhood after my parents died, but he tried. It was only later I found out… who he was, really. And by then it didn't matter that we weren't related. He's my family."

Hong put her in the best boarding school in the city. She rubbed elbows with the children of dignitaries and celebrities and nobody once questioned who she was or where she'd come from. She was bright enough to skip two grades, studied fencing and chess and computer science. Hong wouldn't let her come to work for him without finishing her college degree, so she went and got three. 

"He loved me, but he held me to very high standards," she tells Taemin. "I don't think he intended for me to follow in his footsteps, but how could I not want to be exactly like him? He's my hero."

Taemin nods, trying to picture the ever-aloof Wilson Hong going to school plays and recitals, parent-teacher conferences. He can't quite get there.

"So my point is—Taemin, I found them. I was the one who found my parents. The neighbors called the police because they heard me screaming. And I'm telling you—if he's been through anything close to what you think he's been through, if he's spent the past three years being abused, then… help him."

"He talks, but he doesn't say anything, so what am I supposed to do?" Taemin asks. "NIS training does a number on you. I wouldn't know how to undo that programming. He'll start to say something and then tell me it's classified. And if he's like that with me, then he'll never speak to a therapist."

"I don't mean a therapist. I mean you."

"I just told you he won't talk to me, either. And I don't—talking isn't really—that isn't how I do things."

"You have to try." She shrugs. "Don't let him think that you've forgotten everything. It's scary to have something like that in your head, when you're the only one who knows what you know. If he believes he's not alone—"

"—he just spent the past three years alone, Rachel, I can't know what he went through, and I can't change what happened, so—"

"If he believes he's not alone," she says, raising her voice to speak over his refutations, "then he'll be okay. So if you won't talk about it, then find another way to make him believe it. That's the first step. Figure out the rest later."

 

—

 

Jongin's skittish but he tries to play it cool, and there are moments where Taemin can see the old Jongin—or at least the Jongin he thought he knew—peeking through. A dazzling, unexpected smile when Taemin glances his way, or a laugh at something Taemin's said, head thrown back—he's there. The Jongin that Taemin fell in love with was fearless, and he's here. Somewhere.

Jongin's no longer a prisoner, but he's still trapped in his own head. Crowds rattle him terribly. His instincts are finely-tuned, ready for a fight at a moment's notice like he's still in the prison yard. A stranger bumps into him on the sidewalk and Jongin yelps, and it's only because Taemin's anticipating it and catches Jongin's fist between both hands that they're able to slip past unscathed. Jongin takes a moment to himself in the shelter of a store front alcove, pretending to be interested in the shoes behind the glass, looking past them without really seeing anything.

"I'm hungry," Taemin announces brightly. He pretends not to notice the panic, knowing that Jongin will be grateful to skip the pity, even if he's burning with shame when he thinks about Rachel's advice. He doesn't know how to help, and everything seems so inadequate. "Are you?"

Jongin nods. He can't speak yet, but he rests a heavy hand at the juncture of Taemin's neck, a silent entreaty to give him a minute. Taemin rests his mouth on Jongin's shoulder, raising his eyes to look at Jongin, just watching him struggle to return, wishing there was something more he could do, something more immediate than slipping his hand into Jongin's. A kiss, a brief nudging of his lips into a soft pout, more of a noise than anything. Another one. Then three more, in rapid progression, just to be annoying.

Finally, Jongin glances down and smiles at him, shaky and thin but a smile nonetheless. "Quit it."

"Never," Taemin says.

 

—

 

Very occasionally, Jongin has terrible nightmares, ones he won't discuss, ones that make him get out of bed, crying, drenched in sweat, to pace around the living room until the shivering stops. Taemin never knows if he should go to Jongin in these moments or give him some space, but he ends up going anyway, sitting nearby, waiting for Jongin to tire out enough to sit on the couch and curl into Taemin's lap.

"Sorry, sorry," he breathes, his grip tight around Taemin's wrists to stop him from leaving, not that Taemin would dream of going anywhere. "I'll get it together."

"It was just a dream," Taemin tells him, his hands in Jongin's hair. He smooths the side of his thumb against the hard ridge of skull behind Jongin's ear over and over, a quiet repetitive motion for Jongin to focus on, drawing him back. "You made it to New York. We both did." 

"I know," Jongin says thickly, lips pursing, stopping himself from saying anything else. Taemin's always wondering what's on the other side of Jongin's hiccups. Jongin scrubs at his face with the ball of his fist, refusing to make eye contact even as Taemin pulls him closer into a headlock. "I know."

Taemin lets Jongin lean into him and awkwardly rubs his back with a flattened palm. He's not good at this, not the quiet, serious moments where Jongin _needs_ something, but he still hasn't figured out how to give it to him. His experience with comfort through touch is limited and a distant memory, but Jongin seems to respond to his rough approximation anyway, maybe because he doesn't know or doesn't care that Taemin sucks at showing sympathy. He certainly doesn't know what to say, especially when Jongin doesn't _tell him_ what happened or what the dream was about, so he just keeps repeating himself—"You're in New York. You're safe now."—until Jongin nods, finally back to himself.

Taemin brings him back to bed and they lie there watching each other, and to his credit Taemin waits until Jongin offers him half a smile before he says, "Well, since you're awake—" and jams his hand down Jongin's briefs. 

 

—

 

Taemin doesn't try to hide his smoking, per se, but he knows he's smoking more than usual and he doesn't want Jongin to notice a deviation in his routine, except Jongin does notice, because he's been _trained_ to notice.

"I'm sorry," Jongin says when he comes upon him sitting on the back steps that lead down to the laundry room in the basement. His face crumples sadly. "I'm stressing you out."

"You're not," Taemin lies, sliding over to make room. 

Jongin sits down heavily, and Taemin trades the cigarette in his left hand over to his right so he can put his hand on Jongin's knee.

"Hey," Taemin says quietly after they've been sitting there a while. Jongin glances over at him.

"Mmm?"

Taemin's stomach seizes, his nerve gone. He was going to say _You can talk to me, you know that, right?_ but instead he gently kisses Jongin's temple and says nothing at all.

 

—

 

Jongin's cheeks fill in quickly now that he's eating three proper meals a day. He still has weary, bruise-pink circles under his eyes, but he looks less like a castaway with each day that passes. The scruffy, shaved prison cut grows out and he gets it cut when he can't take it anymore. He lets the barber down the block talk him into the trendy new style and he comes back smiling shyly, the sides shaved and the top slicked back. Taemin ruins it immediately, running his fingers through it, pleased with how good he looks, and the smirk Jongin's fighting back when he catches the look on Taemin's face means he knows it, too. Taemin works his hand into Jongin's pants right there in the lobby of their building and backs him into the elevator. Jongin comes gasping with a chime announcing their arrival on the eleventh floor, his nose pressed into Taemin's pulse.

"Nice," Taemin says, discreetly wiping his palm on Jongin's jeans as they exit the elevator. "You deviant." Jongin's cheeks burn pink, but his body language loosens, just a little, just enough to slip his hand in Taemin's back pocket and pull him closer.

 

—

 

Somehow, in keeping up the pretense of being a legitimate securities firm, a Christmas party is organized. It's a ridiculous charade and Taemin makes sure to tell Hong and Rachel how much he thinks so at every possible occasion, but it's in vain: his attendance is required, no excuses. Taemin has no interest in dressing up and spending the evening making small talk with people, even if they're the people funding his lifestyle.

"Bring him," Rachel insists. "We won't talk about his background, we won't ask him a thing. If he wants to be your friend from school to us, then we respect that."

"For what?" Jongin says when Taemin tries to get him dressed later that evening. Taemin catches hold of Jongin's ankle in his hand, rubbing his cheek against it for comedic effect. 

"So I have someone to talk to."

Taemin's shirtless and puttering around the bedroom, procrastinating, too lazy to finish getting dressed, his tailored dress trousers (Hong had insisted) still unbuttoned. Jongin's eyes keep darting low to the vee of bare skin exposed by the open zipper, but he's half-listening.

"You have Rachel. Talk to her."

"I want you," Taemin says. "Come on, what are you going to do tonight? Sit around by yourself and nap?"

"That sounds nice."

"It sounds _boring_. Come with me."

Jongin's still smiling but his eyes get a little nervous around the edges. He hasn't spent a lot of time around Rachel and Hong and he worries, constantly, about what they might say _if they knew who he really is._ Taemin walks the tightrope between reassuring him and keeping him protected, because he's obviously not ready to be _Kim Jongin, Operative_ again just yet.

"How long?" Jongin asks.

"Half an hour. And then we'll get take-out on the way home, your choice, because I guarantee you it's going to be boring and terrible and the food's going to suck. But come with me. Keep me company. Please."

"Half an hour," Jongin repeats, testing it out loud to see how it sounds. His nose wrinkles, but just a little. It's not a complete refusal, not yet.

"Thirty minutes," Taemin confirms, kissing the arch of Jongin's foot. "You can set an alarm on your phone and drag me out the minute it goes off, I promise. I'll thank you for saving me." 

"Oh, well, in that case." Jongin points his toes and breaks free from Taemin's grip. He's grinning beautifully—bright, dimpled and delighted. "Fine," he says, hands already reaching to pull Taemin's pants the rest of the way off. They fall in a crumpled heap on the floor and Taemin kicks them aside, uncaring.

_Progress,_ Taemin thinks, fingers gripping hard against the nape of Jongin's neck, yanking him in. They're going to be late for the stupid party, but Taemin believes in positive reinforcement, and besides, Jongin's so good—"Ah, fuck, your mouth is amazing, I love—" Taemin groans, and comes.

 

—

 

It gets better like that. Slowly, imperceptibly at first, but it does. Jongin doesn't clutch at Taemin's hand for dear life in public anymore, stops flinching bodily at loud noises or shouts coming from the apartment next door, doesn't tuck his knees to his chest every time he's asleep. He smiles more, the big toothy ones that are more precious than gold to Taemin, filling up Jongin's whole face, and he gives them freely and without provocation. He laughs, he reads, he goes for long walks by himself and doesn't text Taemin for directions or reassurance once, and Taemin catches him in the shower humming along to songs on the radio.

He still doesn't talk about the time they were apart. He references it obliquely, in the rare occasions when he's half-asleep and unable to make himself fully so, when he's wrapped up in his thoughts and tells Taemin, "I never thought I was going to make it out of there," and then, softer this time, almost too soft for Taemin to catch, but most important of all: "Thank you for waiting for me."


End file.
